In order to improve operation of gin stands in the ginning of cotton, seed cotton is dried to reduce the water content to low single digits at a location upstream of gin stands where seeds are removed from lint.
Low water content also helps lint cleaners upstream and downstream of the gin stands to separate seed cotton or cotton from dust and plant parts. Before the lint passes into a bale press, it is desirable to rehumidify the cotton lint so the bale press works efficiently—very dry cotton lint tends to rebound when the bale press retracts.
A typical gin includes a conduit or duct delivering cotton and propelling air from the gin stands through a downstream cleaner into a battery condenser where a screen allows air to escape thereby forming a cotton batt which slides by gravity down a lint slide into the bale press. The standard technique for rehumidifying cotton is to deliver high humidity air through the bottom of the lint slide so it passes upwardly through the batt whereby some or all of the water condenses on the cotton fibers.
Large modern commercial gins run about 60 bales/hour while small gins deliver at least 15 bales/hour. A bale is about 500 pounds of lint so the amount of cotton sliding down the lint slide may be in the range of 7500-30,000 pounds per hour or 2-8 pounds per second. One can imagine that getting a substantially uniform dispersion of condensed water on the batt with current equipment is unlikely.
It has been attempted in the prior art to spray a water taggant solution on a cotton batt as it slides down the lint slide. The results were not satisfactory because the taggant was not found on a disappointingly large fraction of cotton fibers.
Disclosures of some interest relative to this invention are found in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,178,539; 2,764,013; 3,717,904; 3,834,869; 4,019,225; 4,074,546; 6,237,195; 6,240,601; 6,314,618; 6,389,647; 6,807,750; 7,591,048; 7,912,653 and 8,091,181 and U.S. Printed Patent Application 2014/0106357.